"You didn't mean to? I suppose it fell of itself," retorted Mr. Sprague with sarcasm.
"Oscar pushed me," exclaimed Philip. "He pushed me very hard, or I wouldn't have dropped it."
"Now he wants to throw it all upon me, pa. Ain't you ashamed of yourself?"
"It's true, Oscar, and you know it," returned Philip with a show of spirit. "You said I didn't move fast enough."
"It's a wicked lie. I just touched you on the shoulder, and you broke the bottle out of spite."
"I have no doubt Oscar is right," said Nahum Sprague severely. "You have destroyed my property. You have broken the bottle as well as wasted the whisky. You are a wicked and ungrateful boy. Here I have been keeping you out of charity because your lazy and shiftless father left you nothing."
"Don't you say anything against my father," said Philip, his meek spirit aroused by this cruel aspersion of the only human being who had cared for him since his mother's death.
"Hoity, toity! Here's impudence! So I am not to say anything against your father after caring for him through his sickness and burying him at my own expense."
"I'll pay you back, Mr. Sprague, indeed I will," said Philip, his lip quivering.
"You'll pay me back, you who are nothing but a beggar. Well, here's cheek. You talk as if you were rich instead of a pauper."